Ken Whitley: Local Hero

By Harry Minium

Hero is a term that is so overused that it seems at times to have lost its meaning.

You’re not a hero if you do the right thing. That makes you a good person.

You’re only a hero if you do the right thing when it takes courage to do so.

By that definition, Ken Whitley was a hero as a 15-year-old freshman at Norview High School.

It was 1959 and Norfolk was a segregated city. A federal judge had ordered that Norfolk’s schools be integrated. Seventeen brave African-Americans, all hand-picked by the NAACP, enrolled in previously all-white schools.

Many white students objected going to school with Black kids and they shunned, hassled and sometimes beat the unwelcome newcomers.

James Turner Jr. was one of the 17 and enrolled at Norview, along with his friend, Andy Heidelberg. One morning, as Whitley got off a school bus and began to enter Norview, he saw six white kids beating Turner.

Hundreds of students were gathered around, some laughing and jeering. Only Whitley came to his aid.

“Six on one? It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right,” Whitley told me a few years ago.

So, he threw his books down, got a running start and started grabbing guys and slinging them to the ground.

Any one of you who wants to fight after school, show up here and I’ll kick your ass, he yelled at the six guys, who slinked away.

Whitley was a stud athlete who would start at fullback and linebacker for the 1959 Norview state championship team and also wrestled. No one messed with Whitley. He was Turner’s guardian the rest of the year.

He would go on to win two individual wrestling state titles at Norview, play football and wrestle at Virginia Tech and coach and teach for nearly four decades in Norfolk and Virginia Beach.

Along the way, he was an advocate for racial justice and for doing the right thing.

Now, 66 years after breaking up that fight, Ken needs help.

He is suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, a brain disorder that slowly destroys your ability to think, steals your memories and eventually, takes away your ability to do even simple tasks. There is no cure.

Ken’s wife of 23 years, Karen, has cared for Ken lovingly. But she fell and broke both of her legs in December and thus needs help.

Good daycare workers don’t come cheap and bills have been piling up.

Wayne Bradshaw, a former Norview wrestler, began a Go Fund Me account that has raised more than $22,000. The goal is $50,000.

Give if you can.

But if you’re one of the thousands of people who touched by Ken throughout his career, come out to the Freemason Abbey Restaurant in downtown Norfolk on July 2 for an event dubbed Ken Whitley Celebration Day.

Ken and Karen will be there.

Ken is still very social – he and I talked for a while at Old Dominion’s recent spring football game. If Ken ever helped you or was a friend, come out and wish him well.

And please, don’t say “I’m sorry.” Ken doesn’t really know he’s sick. Greet him with a hug and smile and just talk to him. His memories from decades ago are all still there.

Jerry Collier, a Norview graduate who owns Freemason Abbey, will donate $10 to the Whitley family for each meal served that day. The event runs from 2 until 9 in the evening. And I’m sure the place will be packed.

You don’t have to eat – just come and say hello to Ken and other friends.

Ken was my coach when I played football and wrestled at Norview and although he was tough on me at times, we’ve been friends ever since.

I saw an example of his decency during a wrestling match at Booker T. Washington High, for decades the only Norfolk high school for Black students, when I was a senior.

It was clear when we walked into the school that the old saying, “Separate But Equal,” was a total lie.

The place was a mess. Peeling paint, shabby furniture, drab lighting. It was an eye-opening experience for those of us accustomed to the creature comforts in majority white schools.

It was a cold winter night and there was no heat. The Booker T. wrestling room was unheated, the Bookers’ coach told Ken.

Ken invited the Bookers to come work out at Norview, which they did from time to time. That was Kenny. He didn’t care about race or class. He cared about character.

Heidelberg paid homage to Ken in a book wrote a book about The Norfolk 17. Ken along with Calvin “C.J.” Zongolowicz, protected him in school and on the football field, where Andy was a standout.

Once, when the football team was on a road trip, Andy was forced to eat in the kitchen of a restaurant because it did not serve African Americans. Ken and C.J. went to the kitchen and ate with Andy in a show of solidarity.

Whitley coached at Princess Anne, Lake Taylor and Granby in addition to Norview. He won a state title in 1975 at Norview and won more than 400 wrestling matches at all four schools. Ken has been inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame and twice was named Virginia’s High School Coach of the Year.

The Virginian-Pilot named him Coach of the Decade for the 1970s.

He has also been inducted into the Hampton Roads African American Sports Hall of Fame and the Virginia Tech Sports Hall of Fame.

An aside here: he played football at Tech with Frank Beamer, who would become the Hokies’ most successful head coach, and was an All-Southern Conference linebacker. His interception late in a game clinched a Tech victory over No. 10 Florida State, at the time one of the biggest victories in school history.

A ton of people have stepped up to help him – Steve Stocks, who played football and baseball with Ken at Norview and was a long-time area baseball coach, and two of my high school classmates, John McCarthy and Pat Seay, who show up from time to time to help around Whitley’s house in Norfolk’s Wiloughby Spit.

I’ll close with a line from Wayne Bradshaw’s GoFundMe appeal

“Ken needs around-the-clock assistance. 24/7. The bills are not only burdensome but depressing because they don’t stop. There is no light at the end of the tunnel without your support.

“If possible, we want to be that light at the end of the tunnel.”

Harry Minium, Norview High Class of 1971, is senior executive writer for athletics at Old Dominion University and former Virginian-Pilot writer and columnist.